Here Be Monsters (Tyler Cunningham) (23 page)

Old Forge, 4:18p.m., 9/13/2012

I kept checking for reception on my cell phone.
I was almost all the way in town and on my way to the Public Library (
which I'd stopped at to steal WiFi on occasion
) before I was able to connect and dial Frank. I pulled into the parking lot, the only space available was reserved for people with a handicap sticker, so I pulled into that slot (
I'd move if someone else came, but for now, my need was significant
). I grabbed and powered up my laptop while his phone was ringing.

“FRANK!
I'll be done talking in two minutes. As soon as I'm done call your guys at the State Police or DEA with the coordinates I'm about to send you via email. I got attacked in the woods just now by some of the drug dealers, but I got away, so now they know that I know. It's possible that they think I'm a competitor, but you should still get your guys to hit all of the places that I send you coordinates for as soon as is humanly possible. The bad guys that I ran into probably won't be able to call their drug-lab phone-tree for a couple of hours, but no more than that. FUCK! ... sorry.” I was rattled and trying to keep calm enough to give him all he needed to know to get busy catching bad guys.

“Tyler, are you sure...?”
He started to interrupt.

“Fran
k, shut the fuck up and listen. The first three sets of coordinates are 100%. The one I refer to as site A is just a bit outside of Tupper, and can be approached in only two directions so you can bottle them in with cars. Site B has so many roads going in and out that if you can possibly get a helicopter you should use it for site B to supplement cars. Site C has only one access point, so it can be hit hard and fast, by your sloppiest team. Site D is the weakest set of coordinates; being the spot where the red truck guys attacked me, but it should be within a mile of the coordinates; if you can bottle up the roads north of Old Forge, all around that set of coords, it should work.” I stopped to breathe, and Frank jumped in before I could start up again.

“Tyler, calm down, slow down, there's no way I'm gonna remember all of this, and we need to get this right.”

“You're right Frank... let me finish talking through it, and I'll send a copy of everything to your email... ok?”

“Good...
go on.”

“I think that there are three to five more meth-labs, but we don't have time to find them, so you have to go with what I'm sending, and you can try to squeeze more i
nfo out of the guys you catch. I have some ideas, but nothing concrete. I'll send rough coordinates for those ones, but they're essentially guesses at this point, although I'm pretty sure they're out there... within a mile or five of the rough coordinates I’ll send.”

“Is that it?” Frank
asked, when I'd stopped talking for a few seconds. “Four definites that we have to move on right now, this afternoon, and four-ish maybes that we can push anyone we pick up to ID, or just search for after this stuff shakes out.” I may have underestimated Frank, or just not seen him operating in his element before; he was calm and helped me deal with the stress and adrenalin better than I would have otherwise, through his manner and questions.

“Yup, but make sure your guys go in ready for guns, or with
overwhelming numbers, or both. These guys don't fool around.” I was out of breath, as though I'd been running.

“Neither do
we. Send the emails, keep your cell on, and get somewhere very public, with Wi-Fi if possible, while I get things going. I'm assuming that I can use your name in a complaint report to help move things along at speed if needed”

“Yeah, no problem, although I'd just as soon not be in papers or on TV if possible...
ok… start calling people, you should see both emails in a minute or so. I'll talk to you later.”

“Thanks Tyler, you did a great job, although Meg'll kill me for putting you in harm's way.
This is incredible. Call me on my cell in one hour and I should have news.” He hung up, and then so did I.

I had written most of the email at the end of each segment of my ro
ad trip over the last two days. I included the coordinates and some details about the location and approach to each of the three positive meth-labs/camps, along with the rough guess for Site D (
based on where I’d run into the meth truck
). I hoped that the email, in combination with Frank's word on my being attacked, would be enough to get them moving before lunch. I said that I thought there were probably four more additional labs in the woods, and included a G-map with shaded areas to indicate my possibles. I also mentioned that, if they had the extra manpower, sending a crew of local PD or Staties out to the final set of coordinates that I had given him to pick up the guys who had chased me would be a good investment in time and resources, although I wondered how he could scoop them up if they insisted that they were simply asking for directions. I finished up the email, pushed send, breathed a sigh of relief, and took Hope for a walk on the library's manicured lawn.

Stewart's, Long Lake, 5:33p.m., 9/13/2012

“Hi, there's no cell-service here, so I'm calling from a land line in Stewart's, as such my answers may lack detail.” Frank had picked up quickly; he must have been waiting for my call.

“Long Lake, huh...
welcome to the 80s. It's slow going, getting the response we were hoping for, but it may improve as the night goes by.”

“That sounds like bad news Frank...
what's up? They didn't buy it?” I could see in my mind's eye how the whole day was supposed to go. Coordinated teams moving in on the primary sites and the truck guys, and wiping the whole thing clean by dinnertime. It had been too much to hope for, so I waited nervously to hear the extent of the bad news.

“The trouble is in moving that many chess pieces a
round a big board like the Park... getting different locales to coordinate their efforts, and making things happen at the same time.”

“Ugh...
how bad? Are they all going to walk?”

“No, I don't think so.
I called in a complaint to the Old Forge PD and State Troopers about shots fired and reckless driving and drug use/paraphernalia at the boat launch. My thinking is they'll get out there pretty quick and scoop up your bad guys, and there'll be something wrong with them or their truck... they're bad guys after all.”

“Nice...” I said, and meant it.
With a bit of luck the truck guys might even think that they were just unlucky, and not call in an alarm when they got their phone call.

“I got the State guys in Raybrook and some Feds in Albany to agree to raid your Site A, in Tupper.
It's the easiest to get the heavy team from Raybrook to, and costs the least if it's a waste of time, which you and I know it isn't, but they don't. We're killing the nearby cell towers from the time we roll on the lab until we have them. Once we have them, dropping on the other two positive sites should be an easy sell, and we should be able to hold the guys without charges for the time it takes to hit the other sites, even your ‘soft coordinate’ site. My hope is that once we get some of these guys looking at years inside, one of them will give up the locations of the other labs, if they're out there.”

“They are Frank, I can feel them.”

“I believe you, but who knows... maybe we can get a plane to overfly your hunch zones and find them that way, if we can't squeeze someone from the first four sites. So... what do you think... not what we'd hoped for, I know, but...”

“Frank, it's super, I think it'll work...
thanks, and good job!”

“Tyler, I'll talk to you later, but I owe you for this...
you made this happen, and I'm going to come out of it looking good.” Cynthia and I made it happen, I thought, but didn't say.

“Tell me how grateful you are after you see my poor Element tonight.”

“Wait a second... how messed up is it? Can you drive it back to Saranac Lake?”

“No problem. T
he rear lights are busted on the right side, the bumper is thrashed, but not dragging, and all of the glass on the back end is cracked or gone, but I 'fixed' it with lots of duct tape and cardboard.”

“What the hell did you...
never mind... you're in Long Lake and heading home now right?”

“Yup.”

I'll put in a call that my wife's car was stolen and crashed and is being returned to my garage by a dealer. I can get the guys between Long Lake and Saranac, and the Troopers, to look the other way on the lights and such, so long as you don't speed... OK?”

“Awesome.
I'll keep it five below the limit the whole time, especially in Tupper.” Lots of people joke about getting pulled over in Tupper Lake, but I actually was one time, for doing 37 in a 35 zone.

“Sounds good, Tyler.
Drive safe, call me when you hit town, leave the Element at Evergreen Auto, and I'll give you a lift home. I'll be gone and busy for days, thanks to you.” He might get some credit for all of this, but he'd also be going along to kick in a trailer door or two, and likely have to fill out a few pounds of paperwork in the next weeks. I didn't envy him the next week or two.

I wished him well, hung up, bought a mess of hotdogs for the road. I headed home with a song in
my heart (
and head... and mouth
) and Hope in my copilot's seat.

EPILOG

EPILOG, Smart Pig Thneedery, 7:18a.m., 11/8/2012

Stories don't end neatly, at least not real ones... or maybe just not mine. There are threads that stick out in all directions, even when everything should be all neat and tied together, and it can irritate the hell out of you (
somewhat like the unfortunate fall/winter a few years ago when Smart Pig Thneedery produced wool mittens and socks and hats that were uncannily itchy
). As time passed, and things refused to resolve in the ways that I would have liked them to, I found, as had always worked in the past, that adding small servings of Marcus Aurelius to my reading diet helped everything feel better (
even if it wasn't actually better
).

The raids and arrests at George's meth-camps were considered a huge victory in the war on drugs in Northern New York.
Site A and the people working there, and a sizable quantity of methamphetamine and precursor chemicals, were surrounded and scooped up intact. Sites B and C were raided after varying degrees of delay, and with less unmitigated success: at B, the trailer and precursors were found, but the people and meth got away due to a lack of coordination in the raid; at C, a standoff between law enforcement officers and the meth-camp counselors (
and the delay of materials seizure
) resulted in a fire that destroyed most of the evidence. Site D was a surprise, given the lack of perfect directions; the team working that area found the camp without any problem, and seized a huge amount of guns and drugs (
they surmise that it may have been the meth truck’s base of operations
). The state and federal authorities were able to work out deals with one or more of the meth-camp employees (
making deals with people who cook up death for a living is never popular, so the details weren't released, even to Frank
), which resulted in finding two more meth-camps; one outside of Indian Lake, and another to the north of Cranberry Lake, both of which were raided successfully.

I can still feel the ones that got away as ragged holes in my conscience; two meth-camp counselors and a crap-ton of meth from B, a pair of camps that we never found (
but that I'm certain existed/exist near Newcomb
), and the truck guys. The truck guys were released (
rightly I would have to admit)
owing to lack of grounds or evidence for holding them. If they had guns or drugs in their truck or on their persons, they had dumped them in the water or woods by the time the troopers snagged them. I find some solace in the fact that we eviscerated the meth-camp program, the cops and me; there was even some spillover outside of the Park, with guys that the cops had busted in the meth-camps giving up distributors in the cities ringing the Park. Since the program had been such a success, I have no doubt that it will come back again. As long as drugs cost less to produce than people will pay for them, someone will keep making them. I try to feel bad about that, about not ending meth production in my Park forever, but I can't. We did what we could, I did what I could, and it was a lot.

Frank got a commendation and gets loaned out as a liaison to state and federal agencies as a drug guy in the Park now and then.
He barely saw Meg for a couple of weeks, just coming home to sleep once in a while, or to rest his writing hand; but still thanked me when he saw me next. I made sure to wait a bit to let the impact of the damage to my Element sink in and mingle with the glory of the arrests and disruptions to the meth production and distribution apparatus of New York State. Within a week, he found me, and gave me a form to fill out in octuplicate that helped to cover some of the damage to my Element by smooshing the damage into part of the cost of making the busts; with me as an informant and victim of the criminal apparatus. I didn't sell Frank any of my artwork, but neither did he arrest me for what he knew I'd done (
and worse, what he probably suspected I'd done
); he also greeted me with a bit less apprehension when we ran into each other around town, as we do in the course of our daily lives.

I gave Dorothy the full details of my road trip, although she was much more interested in the details of Hope's camping adventures than my brave and glorious dealings with evil hordes of meth-zombies.
She raised an eyebrow when I let slip some of the dietary oddities that Hope had enjoyed along the way, but laughed and clapped like a kid when I mentioned the two of us sleeping in the hammock together, smiled at a story of coyotes challenging us from the woods near Wanakena, and went to get me a pair of icy cokes when I told her about the getaway near Old Forge (
with me holding Hope pinned to the seat with an arm, to stop her getting thrown around
). She asked if I couldn't have just run into the woods at the end of Cedar River Road, and when I said, “Yeah, but...” and looked over at Hope... Dot gasped and smiled and bent over to kiss the top of my head; she seemed to care more about that than anything else (
except possibly my not getting killed
) that had happened in the last two weeks.

It was no surprise to anyone but me that Hope and I stayed together.
When I sheepishly mentioned to Dorothy that I would like to bring Hope home on a trial basis, she smacked me on the head, called me a muttonhead, and told me that she had filled out all of the adoption paperwork when I'd initially picked her up for my camping trip. Hope is sleeping on my feet as I type this up in the Smart Pig office, paying me back every few minutes for sharing some Chinese food with her last night. We've been back over some of the same ground that we covered on our road trip, this time just for fun; I hope she likes exploring the outdoors in winter as well, I've been looking into fleece and booties and a backpack for her for a trip up Marcy this February.

Cynthia was declared missing when her boss, Ben, and I went in to file a missing person's report together on September 18
th
(
after she'd been absent from work for two weeks
). They've had no luck tracking her down by credit-card, and her bank accounts haven't been touched since the end of August. I helped her parents go through her stuff and shut the house up after the report was filed; her fish went to live with a co-worker at the library. It was both awkward and horrible lying to her parents about where I thought she might be, but I think it's always horrible in those instances; even if you're only thinking, rather than knowing, the worst, and trying to keep it from people's loved ones. I miss her every day, and while it hasn't shut my life down, it also doesn't seem to get any better with the passage of time.

I learned some things about myself during those ten days in September; some good, some bad, all of it interesting.
I had assumed that my seeing things from a different perspective meant that I didn't miss important information, or leap to wrong conclusions, like other people do; I do, just in different ways. I never went to prom, never had a girlfriend, never loved anyone or anything like “normal” people do, and assumed that I never would; but I have a dog now, and people that I care about, and while I'm certain that it's different than what other people feel or mean when they talk about love, it's what I have. I like living at the edge of the map, I like working on expanding and improving my personal map, and I like picking at the nasty/dangerous/scary stuff around the edges; but I've learned the hard way that there are monsters here, that poking them can make them angry and snappy, and that I'm no Spenser or Parker or Travis... I'm just Tyler.

I have twice felt as though my world was stolen from me, and twice been shown that this was not the case.
The events of 9/11 that took my parents (
and New York City
) from me when I was a child forced me to relocate and redraw my world; bending to the will of those stronger than me, like the inhabitants of a felled tree giving in to the inevitability of a forced displacement. The loss of Cynthia, and George's subsequent assault on me and my place/security in the Adirondacks, this time as an adult, required that I learn the lesson of standing my ground, and fighting to protect my space in the world; a lesson that I could/should have learned from the Mantis Shrimp in my saltwater tank. I wish that I believed that the world (
and life
) had no more painful lessons to teach me, but feel that I've been tested by life's storms, and stand ready to face what comes next.

Later today, I've been summoned to lunch out at one of the fancy Great
Camps on Upper Saint Regis Lake. Their Chris Craft will be dispatched to pick me up at noon; the details of the meeting (
case?
) sound interesting from what I could glean from the owner's personal secretary (
both what he said, and what he didn't, in our brief conversation
). I know a guy that did some work out there repairing the foundations on some of the outbuildings, and he said that they have a Stickley dining table that seats forty; I would like to see the table, and also see what use that kind of money has for a guy with my particular skill-set (
and skill-deficits
). Hopefully something scary, silly, interesting, and requiring research into arcane branches of lore (
Adirondack and otherwise
) that I've never even imagined.

Tyler Cunningham